RANGEL RESPONDS TO HOUSE COMMITTEE ON STANDARDS OF OFFICIAL CONDUCT

Like several of his colleagues, Congressman Rangel attended the 2007 and 2008 Caribbean Multi-National Business Conferences sponsored by the Carib News Foundation. Congressman Rangel’s travel to the conferences was approved in advance by the very committee that now singles him out for criticism. The Standards Committee report holds Congressman Rangel accountable under the rules for errors by his staff, even though it acknowledges that he did not know of those errors. The Committee’s conclusion is wrong on the facts and unsupported by the law.

The report’s errors could have been avoided if the Committee had not adopted its conclusions before giving Congressman Rangel an opportunity to respond. The rules stipulate that the Committee will solicit the Member’s response to a draft report reflecting its proposed findings before imposing discipline. The Committee did not take that step here. Rather, by the time the report was first made available to Congressman Rangel, the findings of the Committee had already been improperly leaked to the public. Releasing the report on less than a day’s notice compounds this unfairness by presenting the public with a one-sided and incomplete account of the events. Ethics matters are too important to be handled in this fashion.

The Committee correctly found that Congressman Rangel did not know that corporate funds were being used to pay for Member travel. It concluded that the conference organizers lied to the Committee and to the Members, including Congressman Rangel, when they stated otherwise. Like other Members, Congressman Rangel relied on these representations, and on the Committee’s approval of the trip after its own independent investigation, in agreeing to attend. It is undisputed that the Committee staff knew when it approved the trip that corporate contributions to the Foundation were used for multiple program activities, including the conference. Ex. (file memorandum dated December 22, 2008 from Margaret Perl, Staff Counsel, regarding telephone call with organizers on September 30, 2008). Although the Standards Committee admonished a member of its shared staff, it did not impute her knowledge to the Committee’s Members or hold itself responsible for what happened here. Neither Congressman Rangel nor his staff can fairly be held to a higher standard than the Committee itself.

Without justification, the report disregards the undisputed testimony of the Congressman’s staff that they did not know that corporate funds were being used other than as approved by the Committee. Nothing in the Michelle Sherwood memoranda cited in the report demonstrates otherwise. Her colloquial use of the word sponsor does not suggest an understanding that the corporations were “sponsors” within the meaning of the House rules – i.e. that their funds were being used to pay for Member travel. Indeed, the report exonerates other Members who referred to the corporate participants as sponsors.

Moreover, the Committee’s legal analysis of the gift rule sets a precedent that should gravely concern all Members. If Members are to be charged with knowledge of everything that each of their staffs know or should know, Members will be blind-sided with ethics problems. Under this ill-considered standard, Members may commit ethics violations vicariously, even when they have reasonably relied on staff and have no knowledge or reason to know of any staff errors or improprieties. If the Committee proposes to adopt such a standard, it should do so prospectively, after careful analysis and consideration of its broader implications. Its retroactive application to this case singles out Congressman Rangel for an ethics violation ex post facto. The cases cited in the report do not support this result and do not find ethics violations in the absence of actual knowledge by the Member.

In short, the Committee’s decision is ill-considered, unprecedented, unfair to Congressman Rangel, and wrong on the facts and the law. There is no basis to distinguish his conduct from that of the other Members whom the Committee has exonerated. Like his colleagues, Congressman Rangel participated in the conferences in reliance upon the prior approval of the Standards Committee and the sworn representations of individuals that the Committee has since found to be dishonest. No Member should be subjected to such distortion of the ethics process.